“Is this a holy thing to see”

– William Blake

“But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that . . . “

– James 2:18-19

The faithful “shudder” into mental gymnastics justifying their hypocrisy—the ever enduring convenience of Sola Fide.

“Well blossomed is his existence
So unwilling in their souls to see
So weak to face him from
The outcast angle of earth
So rapid do they flee
When bells of order are echoed
Nemesis for the anxious heavy spirit
Nemesis for a generation free”

– Sakis Tolis/Rotting Christ, Sanctus Diavolos

There’s an unavoidable realization faithful individuals eventually encounter, which is this reality’s innate irrelevance.

I first encountered this ultimately existential contemplation at twelve. I struggled rectifying ‘I’ll eventually die and transport elsewhere’ with ‘enjoyably participate in this material reality’. I couldn’t seem to understand why I’d materially indulge until my demise when I could simply orchestrate my demise and transport to this other reality immediately.

It started keeping me up at night and making me not want to really “do” anything . . . since, well . . . this reality was irrelevant and my participation in it was pointless.

My mom took me to talk with the Preacher at our new-age, non-denominational community-church, who reassured me that God wants us to experience this place first (although I can’t remember why) and that nihilistic feelings are natural, so “pray and worship and God will help alleviate these feelings of displeasure.” Then, he gave me a new bible—a New International Version (NIV) common among evangelicals. You just kind of accept the fairy tale at that point.

So, although an unnerving non-answer, this nevertheless proved briefly relieving and I bought an action figure afterwards that produced a smidge of dopamine.

At twelve, I’d already been working for a year and worked with perhaps the most influential individual I’d ever encounter—a young woman named Stacey (Who would move away when I was thirteen. I would never see her again). Stacey, being in her mid-to-late-twenties at the time, would pick me up and drive us to a large farm that housed and raised exotic parrots. Since she was so important to me, I was excited to communicate the “solution” I’d collected for my developing indifferent disposition toward our material existence and see what she could add to it. When I showed her the bible, she simply responded with: “I’m not religious, but it looks very nice. I’m glad you spoke with someone about how you feel.” I didn’t know up to that point that there were “non-religious” people about, and I suppose ignorantly presumed everyone around me believed whatever it actually was I imagined this “Christian” other-reality to be—even the Muslim children I played basketball with at their Mosque down the road . . . they did not, and the instantly-heavy realization that supernatural participation varied tremendously really stuck with me.

“Ah! let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem in heart my own,
Nor fear those watchful sentinels
Which charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste glowing underneath their lids
With fire that draws while it repels.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, To Eva

Now, while I certainly felt momentarily dismissed and inferior (feelings that rapidly waned in light of my fond appreciation for/of this amazing human), my mind exploded with what on earth this actually-mythology really was that I so favored and had been encouraged to take extremely seriously.

There were a handful of other “savings” in my youth where religious individuals, astonished at my never having been baptized, would do their best to collect me (they still do). I was happy to indulge them because it all felt like mere theatre, seemed to genuinely help them, and at that age wanting to belong to something seemed important—I’d later outgrow that. But it was really my crack-head indulgence into Ancient Civilizations and their Mythologies, spurred by my grandmother, that really saved me from the clutches of these absurd biblically-literal cultists and their contortion of what Jesus’ message likely truly was—a message I would come to study and appreciate more and more . . . perhaps more than many, if not any, “Christian” I know save one.

There likely isn’t another reality beyond this one, and if there is . . . nobody among us knows anything about it.

But this position of material irrelevance is weaponized and capitalized on to encourage a host of nonsensical immoralities used to exploit the ignorant, gullible, and desperate, ultimately giving rise to the “faith alone” argument (among others) for how to participate in this fleeting reality before us and make it to the other place. “Christians” hoard wealth, strip rights for others, deliberately impoverish their neighbors, adorn themselves and their homes in gaudy aesthetics, judge, hate, lie, cheat, and steal their way to social significance all at the expense of others . . . and they’ll tell you right to your face that their moral role model is Jesus Christ. This is only possible because this reality is irrelevant and so how one operates within it is equally irrelevant, thus manifestly abhorrent behavior is totally acceptable . . . well, it isn’t.

This uniquely religious hypocrisy is enough to perpetually depress anyone—it’s astonishing, confusing, horrific, and materially detrimental to those Jesus’s commanded them to protect. And, like anyone, depression periodically ensnares me beyond the hateful hypocrisy I find myself surrounded by, but I’ve some historical and bibliophilic fortitude against it; not so apathy, nihilism, or indifference, which’ve regularly re-polished my disposition since childhood, often at the emotional or psychological expense of those around me.

I’m an atheist, and so don’t believe the show goes on (beyond my atomic redistribution—a minimally participatory endeavor), but I’m also a Christian—something “religious” people either dislike or discredit (of course, you can’t be a republican and a Christian . . . but many republican voters will say they are—they’re not, so who cares what those hateful bigots think anyway.)

I mistreated a lot of people in my youth. Music, weed, and self-destructive/dangerous behavior were my self-medication, which manifested aggressively or dispassionately toward the ones I cared for. But as I was periodically losing my faith, friends, family, partners, and mind, a steadfast lantern of guidance and compassion illuminated a judgement-free carefully-secular easement of what was and is a permanently re-reinforced self-hatred long after I’d accepted my exponentially waning theism. That lantern was my Presbyterian Minister, who died from Covid during the pandemic—Reverend Hunt. Now extinguished, a void in it’s place, the lantern leads to nowhere, smothered by the supernaturally unscientific. I find myself often lost amid some contorted Dickensonian discomfort, without a lantern, looking for myself.

Reverend Hunt and his partner Keal were almost certainly homosexuals, but because they no doubt knew how hateful “Christians” really are, they could never reveal it. Even during Reverend Hunt’s funeral, with Keal in the crowd, it could not be uttered (“he married the church” they said). It’s hard to admit now that many of our neighbors, friends, and family who’ve helped usher in this kakistocratic neo-fascism are actually disgusting, hateful, immoral, and hypocritical dipshits. May we weather this storm and communicate to those immoral, false-Christian republican voters among us that they need to pray really fucking hard and apologize, or seriously piss the fuck off—I’ve got so little time for the hypocrisy, hate, and/or stupidity.

I do my best to foster an inclination for critical thinking and general worldly fascination reinforced by Stacey and my Grandma, and the compassionate empathy devoid of any supernatural necessity Revered Hunt ever carried with him. I’ve been an atheist for nearing a quarter-century but I will always be a Christian—The Reverend Hunt kind of Christian. It’s a charge I can never live up to but I do my best to pass along that light when I can in perpetual repentance for the sins of my youth.

This reality matters because it’s the only one we’ve got. Don’t let the powers that be encourage you to abandon your own well-being in the name of religion so the most selfish and hateful among us can exploit you, loot your assets, and leave you dry to amass their own material wealth in the reality they Know is absolutely Not irrelevant.

“Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak and bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e’er the sun does shine,
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.”

– William Blake, Holy Thursday

In Jesus’ name we pray

– Matt